NaPoWriMo 2023 - 1 - once we're cyborgs

once we're cyborgs

once we're cyborgs

I am standing outside my house, 

unable to release the door handle!

Just put me through to tech support...

once we're cyborgs

twenty thousand Japanese girls

wearing the same left arm

as their idol

once we're cyborgs

the preface to fucking requiring

some tech-savvy, negotiation:

if I configure myself like this...?

once we're cyborgs

as many forms for people

as there are ideas of people

the whale, the tree, the somebody-new-four-times-a-day

once we're cyborgs

beeping

something's always quietly beeping 

and you never know if it's you

once we're cyborgs

I don't know...

flexes arm at fitting room mirror

...is it a bit too "Bond villain"?

once we're cyborgs

virus scanners

and ad-blockers:

life and death

once we're cyborgs

Darling, 

your father crashed at the supermarket again

can you go in your truck and pick him up? 

Do you have the ticket / we all are always never going home

I have two poems We all are always never going home and Girl with degenerate matter earring in Corporeal, and another in their sibling publication En*gendered, so I recorded this performance of one from each...

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Ian Badcoe · Do you have the ticket / We all are always never going home

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Nonbinary bus image from:
libragender on tumblr

Featuring bus and bus station sound clips from:
Julien Matthey, abrahemp, and Ubehag on Freesound

TINAG Sound Recording

To celebrate the appearance of my poem TINAG in Selcouth Station here is a recording of me reading it, with a few virtual co-conspirators keeping tabs on me from a safe distance...

If you are wondering where this poem comes from, I was thinking about the difference between "gaming the system" and living life.  People who treat everything as a game are often difficult or even dangerous people.  Military/security organisations will sometimes treat the whole world in an overly game-theoretic way, sometimes just for strategic insight, sometimes embracing horrific outcomes for minor tactical advantage.

On the other hand, however, you've got to have some theory of the world...  some framework within which to pick a move...  It's just important not to see the whole thing as a zero-sum game: where the only possible victory is somebody else's loss.  The universe is not like that, and if you are a little person, without a lot of brilliant solo moves available, then non-zero-sum cooperation is the only way to go.

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Ian Badcoe · TINAG

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